Ballarat Basketball partnering with Phoenix P-12 Community College and Fiona Elsey Cancer Research Institute for fundraiser

During the Miners' and Rush's round four games against the Frankston Blues on Saturday night, the club and school will be running fundraising activities including tin rattling and a raffle.

As part of the school's VCAL program, Phoenix students were tasked with coming up with a community project, choosing to raise $20,000 for FECRI's cancer research.

Through the program, two students in particular, Fraser and Brody, took the initiative to ask Ballarat Basketball if they would be willing to work together to help raise money.

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Phoenix P-12 Community College principal Karen Snibson said the project was identified and driven by the students.

"What they decided to do is they actually wanted to make a difference to the Ballarat community, which we think is super cool," she said.

"In particular, what they wanted to be able to do was reduce the incidence of cancer within the community and the impact for people in Ballarat."

Year 12 college captain Tahlia Watts said partnering with FECRI and Ballarat Basketball helped students become more involved in the community.

"Us donating to the Fiona Elsey Cancer Research Institute, we could have donated to a larger, more broad institution but we decided to go local and we decided to help out more locally so that we can get more involved in the community and it's awesome," she said.

Ballarat Basketball CEO Neville Ivey said the round was a great opportunity to educate the basketball public around the importance of cancer research.

"When you look at FECRI and how it evolved from Fiona, a young person, and the journey that she took and the partnership with her oncologist... and it evolving from there, it's such a beautiful story so we're really proud and happy to be a part of that and to continue to support the institute," he said.

FECRI research assistant Farah Ahmady said the strong connection between the institute and the Ballarat community was key to continuing its research.

"We are a not-for-profit organisation and we heavily rely on donations from the community, and especially Ballarat, and this allows us to do our amazing research which is internationally recognised and we look at many different cancers and it pretty much allows us to do the work that we do," she said.

"It means that we can interact with the people that donate that money and they can see the kind of work that we do as well, so I think that's very important."

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